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kinds of alliances in Latin America off ers
Beijing invaluable votes at the U.N. and
backing for Chinese appointees to mul-
tinational institutions. It also empowers
China to embed standard- setting technol-
ogy companies like Huawei, ZTE, Dahua
and Hikvision—all sanctioned by the
U.S.—in regional infrastructure, allowing
Beijing to dictate the rules of commerce
for a generation.
Already, 19 governments across
Latin America and the Caribbean have
joined Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI), a $1 trillion
trans continental trade and infrastructure
network. Shanghai-based China Cosco
Shipping is building a new $3 billion port
at Chancay in Peru, while there are ambi-
tious proposals for a transcontinental rail-
way linking South America’s Atlantic and
Pacifi c coasts from Brazil to Chile.
COVID-19 presented another oppor-
tunity. By late October, China had pro-
vided over 179 billion masks, 1.73 billion
protective suits and 543 million testing
kits to 150 countries and seven interna-
tional organizations around the globe.
“The pandemic has opened up a diplo-
matic opportunity that China did not
have before,” says Benjamin N. Gedan,
a former South America director on the
White House’s National Security Council,
now with the Wilson Center. This has not
gone unnoticed by Washington; the U.S.
State Department’s J-Bureau— charged
with “ elevating and integrating civilian
security in U.S. foreign policy”—has been
parsing China’s mask diplomacy to deci-
pher where Beijing is attempting to gain
infl uence, sources involved tell TIME.
Globally, the lines of a new cold war
are gaining defi nition: the U.S., Eu-
rope, India and Pacifi c allies on one side;
China, Russia, Pakistan, Central and
Southeast Asia on the other. It’s not yet
clear where the “silk curtain” will fall in
Latin America. But Beijing’s activity has
Washington spooked. “China is a malign
infl uence,” a senior State Department of-
fi cial tells TIME on condition of anonym-
ity. “This is part of the CCP’s global plan
to export Chinese ideals and bad prac-
tices beyond the Asia- Pacifi c,” the offi -
cial says, referring to the Chinese Com-
munist Party. The question now—with
a new occupant of the White House—is
what the U.S. will do about it.THE U.S. HAS LONG BEEN CHARY of in-
terlopers in its southern neighborhood.
In 1823, the Monroe Doctrine drew a red
line regarding European infl uence in the
western hemisphere, and for decades
in the 20th century the U.S. fought the
Cold War with Soviet Russia on the turf of
Latin nations attracted to Marxism. But
President Donald Trump viewed Latin
America largely through a caustic lens of
drug lords, immigrant caravans and gang
violence. His sole visit to the region was
the 2018 G-20 summit in Buenos Aires.
Now, with Joe Biden in the White
House, the battle for infl uence is likely
to fl are up once again. As Vice President,Biden visited the region a record 16 times,
and he personifi es the “good neighbor”
approach to the region crafted by FDR.
Biden was Barack Obama’s point person
on initiatives to combat violence and
drugs in Colombia, political corruption
in Guatemala and more. “Joe Biden brings
a deeper knowledge of Latin America and
the Caribbean to the presidency than any
U.S. leader since the end of the Cold War,”
says Michael Camilleri, director of the
Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program at the
Inter-American Dialogue.
U.S. ties run deep across Latin Amer-
ica, but perhaps deeper in Panama, where
the U.S. dominated commerce and pol-
itics throughout the 20th century, and
which has emerged as a battleground in
the superpower contest.
The country’s namesake canal, through
which trade fl ows between the Atlantic
Ocean and the Pacifi c Ocean, was com-
pleted by the U.S.
Army and con-
trolled by Wash-
ington for almost
the entire century.
In the 1940s, the
U.S. Department
of Commerce
helped set up a
free-trade zone in
Colón, a city near
the canal’s en-
trance. The Colón
Free Trade Zone
(ZLC) quickly
became a gate-
way for American
fi rms such as Gil-
lette, Coca-Cola
and Pfi zer to enter the Latin American
market.
Yet today, seven decades later, things
have changed in the ZLC. Across its
1,000-hectare sprawl of ports, ware-
houses and offi ces, Chinese companies
dominate. “China accounts for the larg-
est share of imports that come into the
zone, 40% of the total,” says Giovanni
Ferrari, manager of the zone. Fer-
rari says the surge of Chinese products
began around 2010, and he expects it
to grow as China seeks to boost its trade
with the rest of the world in the wake
of the pandemic. “China has identifi ed
the potential of Panama and [the ZLC]
as a reference point for distribution.”▲
A soybean plantation in
Rondonia, Brazil. The country
exports 80% of its soybean crop
to China$100 BILLION
The value of
bilateral trade
between China and
Brazil, the region’s
largest economy19
The number of
countries in the
Americas signed up
to China’s Belt and
Road Initiative